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Neanderthal rock engraving

Important evidence for symbolic behaviour from Gorham’s Cave, Gibraltar

Archaeologists from the Gibraltar Caves project have found a rock engraving at Gorham’s Cave on the eastern side of Gibraltar. The deeply-etched cross-hatched pattern is carved into the dolomite bedrock of the cave, and was wholly-covered by an undisturbed archaeological level containing Mousterian artefacts. Thus its association with Neanderthals is secure.

The engraving is at least 39,000 years old and although modern humans were in Europe by that time, they had not yet reached the southern Iberian Peninsula. Furthermore, the Gibraltar rock engraving predates the earliest Aurignacian cave art, suggesting that it was an independent Neanderthal development.

Researchers carried out a number of tests to demonstrate that the engraving was intentional. They used a variety of tools and cutting actions on blocks of dolomite rock similar to the rock face at Gorham’s cave and found that results best matching the engraving were achieved by using a pointed tool to create and enlarge a groove. Considerable care and physical effort was required to produce similar markings. The researchers also used the sharp tools to cut pork skin on a dolomite slab to rule out the possibility that the pattern had been produced accidentally while cutting meat or working animal hides.

The Gorham’s Cave rock engraving is only the latest in a series of recent discoveries that clearly demonstrate that the Neanderthals were not the dimwits of popular imagination. It is possibly the strongest indication yet that they were capable of symbolic behaviour